"T- 


LINCOLN  ROOM 

UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 


il 


MEMORIAL 

the  Class  of  1901 

founded  by 

HARLAN  HOYT  HORNER 

and 

HENRIETTA  CALHOUN  HORNER 


d 


Abrahan       .ncoln 

By  Nicholas  Murray  Butler 

Address  at  the  Lincoln  Day  Dinner  of  the 
National  Republican  Club,  Waldorf  Astoria,  New  York 

February  12,  1920 

It  was  my  good  fortune  to  be  born  and  brought  up 
under  the  shadow^  of  the  name  and  the  fame  of  Abraham 
Lincoln.  It  is  family  tradition  that  I  w^as  raised  in  my 
mother's  arms  to  see  him  pass,  but  unfortunately  no 
trace  of  so  memorable  an  event  was  left  on  an  infant's 
memory.  His  portrait  hung  on  the  walls  of  my  childhood 
home.  His  words  were  constantly  quoted  with  reverence, 
and  the  Gettysburg  Speech  w^as  early  committed  to 
memory  as  if  it  were  part  of  Holy  Writ.  The  still 
youthful  veterans  of  the  Civil  War  hailed  his  name  with 
choking  voices  and  with  tears  in  their  eyes,  and  the 
emancipated  slave  threw  himself  on  his  knees  and  raised 
his  eyes  to  Heaven  at  the  sound  of  Lincoln's  name. 
What  manner  of  man  was  this  who  had  become  the  idol 
of  a  free  people  and  the  very  incarnation  of  their  loftiest 
spirit  and  their  noblest  ideals?  Years  have  passed  and 
his  stately,  somber  figure  stands  out  every  day  more 
clearly  against  the  background  of  history.  Little  by 
little  one  comes  to  understand  the  full  meaning  of  Lowell's 
noble  description  of  Lincoln  in  the  Commemoration  Ode  as 

The  kindly-earnest,  brave,  foreseeing  man, 
Sagacious,  patient,  dreading  praise,  not  blame, 
New  birth  of  our  new  soil,  the  first  American, 

and  then  to  comprehend  the  farseeing  vision  of  Stanton 
when,  as  he  turned  his  grief-stricken  face  from  the  death- 
bed of  Lincoln,  he  exclaimed:  "And  now  he  belongs  to 
the  ages." 

[I] 


Surely  no  citizen  of  New  York  can  be  asked  to  stand 
upon  the  platform  at  Cooper  Union  to  speak  to  the 
public  without  bearing  in  mind  that  that  place  is  famous 
forever  because  Abraham  Lincoln  spoke  there.  Surely 
no  American  can  go  unmoved  to  Springfield  and  stand 
uncovered  before  the  tomb  of  Lincoln  without  feeling 
that  he  is  at  Liberty's  greatest  shrine.  Surely  no  Ameri- 
can can  visit  the  old  Cabinet  Room  at  the  White  House 
and  look  from  its  windows  out  across  the  low-lying 
ground  and  over  the  Potomac  to  the  Virginia  shore, 
without  remembering  that  in  that  room  Lincoln  struggled 
with  hope  and  with  despair;  that  in  that  room  Lincoln's 
breaking  heart  was  compelled  to  listen  to  bitter  and 
caustic  criticism  alike  of  his  policies  and  purpose,  and 
that  from  that  very  window  he  had  been  able  to  see  the 
watch-fires  of  a  hostile  army  while  he  counted  the  hours 
until  he  should  hear  that  the  capital  was  still  safe.  From 
whatever  side  we  approach  Abraham  Lincoln  we  are 
stirred  to  our  depths  by  the  feeling  that  in  him  there 
dwelt  and  lived  and  spoke  the  very  spirit  of  all  that  is 
best  in  America. 

What  new  thing  can  be  said  of  Abraham  Lincoln? 
Oratory  has  long  since  exhausted  its  most  sonorous 
periods.  Poetry  has  sung  both  its  dirges  and  its  paeans, 
rhetoric  has  piled  epithet  upon  epithet  and  praise  upon 
praise;  yet  Abraham  Lincoln  rises  above  it  all.  There  is 
a  wonderful  line  in  Mr.  Drinkwater's  gripping  drama: 
"Lonely  is  the  man  who  understands,"  he  writes.  May 
not  this  perhaps  be  the  key  to  the  character  of  Abraham 
Lincoln?  Abraham  Lincoln  understood.  He  saw  deep 
down  into  the  workings  of  the  human  heart  and  he  felt, 
as  a  skilled  physician  feels  the  pulse  of  his  patient,  the 
slightest  movement  of  its  elemental  passions.  He 
pierced  at  a  glance  the  workings  of  the  human  mind, 
and  with  a  bit  of  humor  or  with  an  epithet  he  would 
strip  the  mask  of  hypocrisy,  of  selfishness,  of  meanness. 

[2] 


of  vanity  or  of  treason  from  the  shrewdest  human  face, 
Abraham  Lincoln  was  lonely  because  he  understood. 
Here  is  the  secret  of  the  pathos  of  the  man;  here  is  the 
answer  to  the  question  why,  in  our  search  to  understand 
Lincoln,  he  so  constantly  eludes  us.  He  could  under- 
stand each  one  of  us,  but  no  one  of  us  can  fully  under- 
stand and  interpret  him. 

There  is  something  compelling  about  the  conception 
of  a  century  of  years.  One  century  slips  noiselessly  into 
another,  to  be  sure,  but  human  imagination  has  marked 
off  the  centuries  as  if  high  barriers  w^ere  built  between 
them.  The  nineteenth  century,  as  we  can  alread}^  see, 
was  a  century  of  transition.  The  political  and  the  social 
revolutions  that  were  begun  as  the  eighteenth  century 
drew  to  its  close,  marched  steadily  and  constructively 
forward  through  the  nineteenth.  The  industrial  revolu- 
tion which  has  transformed  our  economic  and  our  social 
life,  is  the  very  child  of  the  nineteenth  century.  That 
century  was  a  period  rich  in  human  discovery  and  human 
achievement.  It  saw  luxuries  pass  first  into  comforts 
and  then  into  necessities  of  life.  It  watched  a  constant 
and  striking  succession  of  scientists,  historians,  poets  and 
prophets  from  Goethe  to  Walt  Whitman.  Yet  as  we 
stand  off  from  the  nineteenth  century  and  try  to  interpret 
its  meaning  in  history,  two  great  figures  stand  out  clearly 
from  all  this  as  representative  of  its  main  opposing  forces. 
Each  is  the  figure  of  a  man  of  modest  beginnings,  who 
rose  to  great  eminence  and  exceptional  power  and  who 
will  always  live  in  history.  The  one  was  animated  by 
the  ambition  to  rule,  and  the  other  by  the  zeal  to  serve. 
The  one  gathered  up  in  his  own  hands  all  the  forces  of 
reaction  and  hurled  them  in  the  face  of  the  onward- 
marching  armies  of  freedom.  The  other  called  upon 
these  armies  of  freedom  to  follow  where  he  led,  and 
through  them  dedicated  a  nation  to  the  cause  that 
government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people 

(3) 


LIBRARV 


should  not  perish  from  the  earth.  The  one  endeavored 
to  turn  backward  the  hands  upon  the  face  of  the  clock 
of  time,  the  other  gladly  watched  and  guarded  those 
hands  as  they  steadily  ticked  out  the  progress  of  the  race. 
The  one  man  was  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  Emperor  of  the 
French,  who  had  conquered  Continental  Europe  at 
forty,  and  who  died  at  fifty-two  in  exile  on  the  lonely 
rock  of  St.  Helena.  The  other  was  Abraham  Lincoln, 
sixteenth  President  of  the  United  States,  who  had  yet 
to  achieve  his  fame  at  the  age  when  Napoleon  was  sent 
into  exile,  and  who  was  murdered  at  fifty-six  by  the 
devilish  spirit  of  hate,  and  died  amid  the  tears  and  the 
fervent  blessings  of  his  stricken  fellow-countrymen  and 
of  an  anxious  world. 

Great  personalities  are  the  embodiment  and  the  spokes- 
men of  great  forces.  They  are  more  than  persons,  they 
are  events.  Napoleon  imposed  his  mighty  w411  upon 
France  at  thirty,  an  age  at  which  Lincoln  was  still  struggl- 
ing with  poverty  and  living  in  relative  isolation.  Napo- 
leon represents  genius  at  its  highest  and  its  worst.  His 
was  a  stupendous  combination  of  military  with  civil 
genius,  of  wide  comprehension  with  grasp  of  minutest 
detail,  together  with  prodigious  vitality  of  mind  and 
body.  Lord  Dudley  wrote  of  Napoleon:  "He  has  made 
all  future  renown  impossible."     One  wonders. 

Lincoln,  on  the  other  hand,  was  the  true  child  of  his 
race  and  of  his  people.  Without  formal  school  training 
or  discipline,  without  pretence  to  scholarship,  his  was  a 
nature  in  which  mind  combined  with  heart  and  heart 
with  mind,  to  create  a  personality  unique  in  all  history. 
His  qualities  were  not  super-human,  but  intensely  human. 
His  natural  wisdom,  his  native  wit,  his  deep  and  sincere 
human  sympathy,  his  intuitive  grasp  upon  the  principles 
and  ideals  of  American  life  and  government,  all  united 
to  make  him  the  representative  of  America  before  a  vote 
had  been  cast  for  his  name'.     The  people  only  acknow- 

(4] 


ledged  and  ratified  what  Divine  Providence  and  nature 
had  done.  Yet  it  was  of  such  a  man  that  Wendell 
Phillips  angrily  cried  out:  'Who  is  this  huckster  in 
politics?    Who  is  this  county  court  advocate?" 

Napoleon  and  Lincoln  are  wide  as  the  poles  asunder. 
The  forces  that  they  summoned  to  their  aid  and  the 
ideals  for  which  they  fought  are  everlastingly  at  war. 
From  the  very  beginning  of  history  the  principle  of 
force  and  the  principle  of  freedom  have  struggled  for 
mastery  over  the  minds  and  the  hearts  of  men.  All 
history  is  the  long  story  of  this  amazing  contest.  The 
tide  of  battle  has  ebbed  and  flowed,  now  in  Asia,  now  in 
Africa,  now  in  Europe,  now  in  America,  but  steadily  the 
armies  of  freedom  have  gained  ground.  Not  always  have 
they  been  able  to  hold  it.  Sometimes  they  have  been 
driven  back  from  advanced  positions  and  a  thousand 
years  have  passed  before  a  new  forward  movement  could 
be  begun.  When  Abraham  Lincoln  said:  "This  nation 
can  not  exist  half  slave  and  half  free,"  he  was  but  apply- 
ing to  the  United  States  the  principle,  equally  true, 
"This  world  can  not  exist  half  despotism  and  half  de- 
mocracy." A  world  that  produces  a  Napoleon  and  a 
Lincoln  must  be  at  war  until  Napoleon  overcomes  Lincoln, 
or  Lincoln  overthrows  Napoleon.  In  this  everlasting 
conflict  each  human  being  must  choose  his  captain  and 
fight  until  final  victory  is  won.  He  must  choose  Napoleon 
and  the  rule  of  force,  or  Lincoln  and  the  rule  of  freedom. 
He  can  not  serve  both  masters. 

Few  could  have  foreseen  after  Napoleon's  banishment 
that  in  just  a  hundred  years  his  challenge  would  be 
heard  from  the  lips  of  another  monarch.  Few  would 
have  believed  that  after  Waterloo  there  would  come  a 
Chateau-Thierry,  an  Argonne  Forest,  or  a  Verdun. 
Yet  they  did  come,  and  the  old  battle  was  never  more 
fiercely  fought  than  in  the  years  just  passed.  The  cause 
of  freedom,  thank  God,  has  conquered  that  enemy,  and 

l5] 


now  turns  stern-faced  and  valiant  to  confront  other  and 
subtler  foes. 

There  are  among  us  allies  of  Napoleon  who  do  not 
wear  military  uniform  and  who  do  not  bear  arms.  With 
stealthy  tread  and  whispering  voices  they  go  about 
spreading  the  doctrine  that  liberty  is  dead ;  that  men  are 
bound  by  invisible  chains,  and  that  the  law,  together 
with  the  order  which  it  preserves  and  the  liberty  which 
it  ensures,  is  a  curse,  not  a  blessing.  It  is  insinuated  that 
the  law  is  a  manacle  put  upon  human  hands  by  those 
who  would  dominate  through  cunning  rather  than  by 
conquest.  All  this  is  to  pave  the  way  for  a  new  attack 
by  the  disciples  of  force  and  of  world  domination,  al- 
though the  methods  are  new  and  the  declared  purposes 
quite  different.  Their  aim  is  an  autocracy  not  of  a 
monarch,  but  of  a  mob.  These  attacks  on  liberty  are 
just  as  real  and  perhaps  quite  as  dangerous  as  if  made 
on  open  field  of  battle  with  cannon  and  machine  guns 
and  poison  gas.  To  lead  us  to  resist  and  to  repel  these 
new  attacks,  we  summon  the  spirit  of  Abraham  Lincoln. 
He  knew,  few  men  ever  knew  so  well,  that  law  has  been 
made  by  free  men  to  protect  liberty  and  to  hold  open 
the  door  of  opportunity  by  the  doing  of  strict  justice 
between  man  and  man.  He  knew,  few  ever  knew  so 
well,  that  human  liberty  is  as  much  in  peril  from  the 
many  as  from  the  one.  He  knew,  few  ever  knew  so  well, 
that  obedience  to  law,  respect  for  law  when  law  is  built 
upon  the  foundation  of  civil  liberty,  is  the  cornerstone 
of  any  form  of  civil  society  that  is  to  endure. 

Listen  to  his  own  words: 

Let  every  American,  every  lover  of  liberty,  every  well- 
wisher  to  his  posterity,  swear  by  the  blood  of  the  Revolution 
never  to  violate  in  the  least  particular  the  laws  of  the  country, 
and  never  to  tolerate  their  violation  by  others.  .  .  .  Let 
reverence  for  the  laws  be  breathed  by  every  American  mother 

[6] 


to  the  lisping  babe  that  prattles  on  her  lap;  let  it  be  taught 
in  the  schools,  in  seminaries  and  in  colleges;  let  it  be  written 
in  primers,  spelling  books,  and  in  almanacs;  let  it  be  preached 
from  the  pulpit,  proclaimed  in  legislative  halls  and  enforced 
in  courts  of  justice.  And,  in  short,  let  it  become  the  political 
religion  of  the  Nation;  and  let  the  old  and  the  young,  the 
rich  and  the  poor,  the  grave  and  the  gay  of  all  sexes  and 
tongues  and  colors  and  conditions,  sacrifice  unceasingly 
upon  its  altars. 

Napoleon  was  a  great  law-giver;  but  for  him  law  was 
to  establish  and  assure  order  upon  a  foundation  of  force. 
For  Lincoln,  law  was  to  establish  and  assure  order  upon 
a  foundation  of  freedom.  The  nineteenth  century  was 
the  scene  of  two  great  combats  over  human  ideals.  The 
twentieth  century  is  still  young  and  has  its  history  to 
make.  Wise  men  will  expect  the  old  combat  to  be  con- 
stantly renewed,  for  no  Utopia  is  in  sight.  We  must 
take  sides  with  Napoleon  or  with  Lincoln.  The  twentieth 
century  Napoleon  may  be  a  Lenine  or  a  Trotsky,  and 
the  twentieth  century  Lincoln  may  be  born  in  some 
other  land  than  ours,  but  the  driving  forces  will  be  the 
same,  the  animating  ideals  will  be  the  same.  As  the 
nineteenth  century  so  in  the  twentieth,  the  world  can 
not  exist  half  despotism  and  half  democracy.  Either 
Napoleon  or  Lincoln  must  win.  Every  real  American 
hearing  in  his  heart  the  cry  of  threatened  liberty,  will 
re-echo  the  old  war  song,  to  which  the  Boys  in  Blue  so 
cheerfully  marched  two  generations  ago :  "We  are  coming, 
Father  Abraham,  a  hundred  million  strong." 


[7] 


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